


Leave Nothing Less Than Something That Says

by LinnetMelody



Category: The Transformers (Comic), Transformers: All Hail Megatron
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-12
Updated: 2010-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinnetMelody/pseuds/LinnetMelody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2010 Transformers Gift Exchange.   For Kalaryx, who said "I'm very fond of the All Hail Megatron series at the moment and would love something exploring the ways in which Mirage coped with being the one everyone seemed to point the finger at."  Accused by his team mates of not being worthy of the Autobot symbol on his chest, Mirage justifies his choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave Nothing Less Than Something That Says

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



It’s late when Mirage returns. He’s exhausted, running on fumes, but he’s still alive. The mission had been long and his energy reserves are nearly depleted. _Dangerous. Foolish. …Ultimately necessary._

The forest is dark, inky-black and silent when he lands. Stars twinkle in the western sky, pinpoint pricks of brilliance that aren’t quite enough to light his path, but are plenty bright enough to reflect off any visible plating. He can’t go invisible again, not now, his reserves are way too low, and so he stops at the river bank for a couple handfuls of mud to take care of the problem. It does the job, which is all he asks, but the glop oozes into his joints and articulated armor. It’s more than a little disgusting. He distantly hopes he can get cleaned off and refueled before he reports in.

It had taken nearly half an orbital rotation to convince the leadership to consider this spot for their base. Primus knows there are still mechs who aren’t happy about it. It makes more sense to them to have their obviously-mechanical selves and equipment in the city, where vehicles are common, and where energy signatures can be easily blended in to. Here, the damp and the moss and the mud get into slagging everything and the gouges in the wet earth could be so easily followed.

If they’d ever bother to look down, that is.

But Mirage, who’s gotten damned good at recognizing which things are nearly invisible while in plain sight, knows that this site’s much, much better. He knows the wet and the grime disgust and irritate his Autobot brothers.

But they disgust the Decepticons even more.

The mud is cold and slimy, and Mirage can swear he feels a little bit of wiggling along his cables as the local insect life tries to get back down to the ground. He walks slowly along the edge of the river, placing his pedes carefully, while the goop drips and slithers down his chassis, blending him in with the night.

The base is supposed to be south-ish of his current position, and he’s not long in the shadow-dappled wood before he registers the sensor getting tripped. A half-second to let whoever’s manning the station look at the boards, and then Mirage lets his transponder pulse. He imagines he can see his identification flaring brightly in the dark, a beacon, a target, and he has to force himself to hold still. This part never gets any easier.

::Authorization pending.::

 _Pending?_ he wonders. _They’ve never had to think about it before._

He crouches and sits frozen in the darkness, the icy chill of confusion/worry/danger flushing through his lines as multiple scenarios race through his processor. There’s no one actually monitoring the perimeter. The base was attacked. There’s been an outbreak, a virus, they’d been infiltrated and overrun and Decepticons are even now erupting from his former home, intent on--

::Identification confirmed.::

The night air is warm and he’s been lucky in this mission: he wasn’t damaged. Even so, it takes longer than it should for him to stand and make his way home.

 _Maybe they did their thinking while I was out._

His chest armor aches.

 

~o~o~o~

 

“—every second solar cycle. They’re giving him long enough to self-repair most of the internal damage before they question him again.”

Optimus Prime dims his optics slightly at the news. “I see.”

“Sir, I didn’t know what kind of team you’d put together to get him out, so I did as much recon as possible for all known access points to his cell in preparation.” Mirage slides the datapad forward across the desk. “Once I was certain of how often they were interrogating him, I slipped him some energon and shorted his cell door locked. It’ll be late tomorrow before they notice, and another half-day’s work to get the door repaired.”

Prime’s optics blinked. “What of his guards? Once our presence is spotted, they’ll be expecting us to free him.”

“True, sir. They won’t be expecting any of their ship-board weapons to not work, however.”

“…What?”

Mirage shifts a little and straightens his posture, even though his chest plates are still twinging. “When I hacked in to their public message board, I found some …interesting memos. It seems there’s a new policy about the wastefulness of ammunition and the frequent damage to bulkheads and equipment through inter-personnel altercations. No one aside from actively patrolling units is to have side arms on their person, unless it’s built into their base armor.”

Mirage lets himself enjoy the sight as his Prime’s face lights up with humor. “Ah hah. It seems the mice have been playing too much.”

“Mice, sir?”

“Nevermind, Mirage.” Optimus waves his hand. “I’m assuming that something has occurred to these weapons that they’ll retrieve when we attack?”

“You could say that. The guns on level C won’t have any compression gaskets at all – someone must have reassembled them wrong. There’s one cache that is only ammunition, sitting beside this interesting little device with a timer on it…” Mirage taps the datapad, pointing out the detonation frequency on the fourth page. “And one cache – well. Prime, I don’t know what they were thinking. They put two entire crates of weapons in an unused airlock.”

Optimus’ laughter is full and shakes his entire frame. “Is this the airlock near the prison cells?”

“You know, I do believe it is.” Mirage shrugs his shoulders and ignores the gritty feeling left from the mud. “Perhaps they were running out of storage space.”

Optimus stands – _Primus, I always forget how tall he is_ – and claps him gently on the back. “Excellent work. I’ll get this to Ironhide and we’ll get a couple of teams ready as fast as we can. Thank you, Mirage.”

“Just doing my job, sir.”

“Mm. Get down to medical and have Ratchet check you over before you recharge. I’ll give you an update on the rescue mission as soon as I get something definitive.”

“Of course, Optimus.”

 

~o~o~o~

 

The berths in Ratchet’s med bay aren’t designed to be comfortable. Mirage is fairly convinced that the old cantankerous medic doesn’t want anyone “feeling free” to come to him with every little thing. He’s heard of the brilliance that happens when Ratchet’s got your spark in his hands, but he’s also sure that Primus only allows such brilliance a limited number of occurrences. In light of that, Mirage doesn’t think he really needs to be here, bothering the mech.

 _But I’m never telling Prime his concern isn’t warranted._

When he settles onto the berth where Ratchet pointed, his chassis is still wet. He’s fairly certain he got all the grit and crud out of his cables, but the new washracks aren’t calibrated correctly yet. He had wanted the cleanser to scour him, scrub him, leave him tingly and shiny-bright with the last of the mission sudsing down the drains, but instead the cleanser had been soft and slick and soapy. He feels oiled, but not really _clean_. He’s not happy with this, and vows to himself to take another as soon as Ratchet gets done with him.

“And what have you managed to do to yourself this time, hmm?” Ratchet sounds resigned.

“Nothing.” At the medic’s skeptical optic-ridge-lift, Mirage spreads his arms wide, servos whirring, and wiggles all his fingers. “I swear, nothing! Not a scratch, not a dent, not a nick in the paint job!”

Ratchet snorts. “I’ll believe that when I see it with my own optics. Lie down.”

It takes a while to run a complete diagnostic – deep inside, the part of him that’s an infiltrator and saboteur is grateful that Ratchet doesn’t take him at his word – and he’s not-so-carefully poked and prodded before finally being allowed to sit up again. “Other than being dangerously low on energon, you are in pretty much the same shape you were when you left. Which is good,” he grunts, “because I don’t really have the time to deal with yet another injured ‘bot.”

Mirage can see the way the medic’s foot plates drag a bit as he walks across the bay. “You haven’t been recharging, have you.” It’s more of a statement and Mirage isn’t sure why he said it out loud – it’s none of his business.

“Who has time?” is the response he gets, and Ratchet returns with a cube of energon in his hands. “Here,” he commands, “drink this where I can see you. When you’re finished with it, you’re heading straight to your bunk and recharging for at least half a solar cycle. Do not—“ and he holds up his hand as Mirage opens his mouth to protest, “—think that I am ‘coddling’ you. The mission Prime has set up for the next few days is going to take nearly every mech we’ve got, and you need to be processing at your top speed. The better you function now, the less likely I am to have to weld your aft back together later.”

He acknowledges this is true with a small nod, and drains the shimmering cube, careful not to spill. The arch of his head as he drinks brings Ratchet’s attention back to his chest plating, however, and the medic gently taps the sigil on the front before taking the empty cube. “How’s this feeling?” he asks. “Any problems with the repairs?”

Mirage shakes his head and searches desperately for a rescue line. “No, it feels like it should. Hey, I got you something.” Reaching into his subspace pocket, he retrieves a small oval of pressure-treated rubber and offers it to Ratchet. “You were talking about servo repair before I left, and load-bearing shocks, I think? I found some of these and wondered if they would do you any good.”

Ratchet eyes the small part – which means he isn’t eyeing the chest plating – and Mirage thinks he’s grateful for the reprieve. “Hmm. Yes, I can see how a few of these would be useful. Where did you find it?”

He hauls out the rest of the little rings, dozens of them, and says “They were on level C with a stack of unguarded equipment. I had to unattach most” _…all…_ “of them, so you need to check them over for tears or defects, but I figured that the Decepticons needed them less than we did.”

“Interesting.” Ratchet takes the piles of little rings and dumps them in a drawer under one of his repair tables. “If these work the way I think they should, it will cut down on some of the slow wear-and-tear in our joints.” He turns back to face Mirage and smiles fully. On Ratchet, it looks a little weird. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, it was nothing.” He jumps down from the berth and twists his head carefully, unkinking lines. “Just wanted to help, you know?”

“I know.”

At the door, Mirage looks over his shoulder and hesitates. “Hey, Ratchet…”

“Yes?” The ‘bot is sitting at the terminal again, probably updating Prime on how his check went.

“You should recharge.”

“Hmm?” Ratchet’s optics come back up to meet his and Mirage swallows. He isn’t sure how much he should say. How much is needed to be believed.

“The mission. When we – when we bring him back? He’s really going to need you.” For a moment, Mirage is back in that cell, staring helplessly at the unlucky soul who the Decepticons had just finished torturing. Slashed fuel lines, broken plating and shattered optics, and he’d never been so desperately glad to have been trained even slightly in basic repairs. The ache in his spark chamber intensifies just a little, and he’s silent – not even a whisper of comfort, of reassurance, he _can’t_ – as he repairs the fuel lines and feeds his energon ration to the bound ‘bot.

When he comes back to himself, Ratchet is standing in front of him again, not touching, not talking, just watching somberly. Mirage forces the words from his dry throat. “He’s going to be in bad shape. He’s been hurt so much. You need to rest, too.” All the helpless feelings, the words of comfort he couldn’t speak, and the absolute faith in Ratchet’s Primus-given brilliance come out in the next statement. “You’ll need to be running at your best, because he’s going to need that.”

There is a long moment, where the two Autobots stare at each other, and Mirage somehow senses a world of meaning in the silence. “All right,” Ratchet finally says, quietly. “There’s nothing I absolutely have to do right now, so I’ll go catch some recharge.”

Mirage nods, throat now too tight to reply, and walks out the med bay doors.

 

~o~o~o~

 

True to his word, Prime has two teams assembled by the time Mirage comes up from his mandatory recharge. Mirage is set to be in the second group, sneaking in to the prison section of the ship with his team while the first group – which he notes, with resignation, is led by Ironhide – attacks the perimeter of the ship and acts as a decoy.

All in all, it’s a pretty decent plan. Coupled with Mirage’s knowledge of the ship’s patrol patterns and the activation of the pre-sabotaged weapons caches, there’s a fairly good chance they’ll all make it back in (mostly) one piece.

In fact, Mirage is so optimistic about the plan that he uploads a new weapon schematic to the mainframe and flags it for Ironhide’s attention. He’s honest enough to admit to himself that he hopes it will distract the old warhorse long enough to keep him out of his team’s readiness checks. They’re _infiltrating_ the ship, for Primus’ sake! There’s no need for extra weight from added weapons that they should not have to use!

Mirage doesn’t want to fight with Ironhide – not again, not yet – and doesn’t say any of this out loud.

Finally, it’s time. Mirage spends the last few moments in the tree line just outside the base, studying the tracks and marks on the ground made by careless mechs. The coming rain will fill in the ruts, mud squelching and moving and grass obscuring the signs of their passage. Once the teleporter that Wheeljack was working on was completed, the Autobots wouldn’t use this entrance much and after a few months, the ground would look like they had never been here.

Carefully, not really letting himself think about it too much, Mirage reaches up with a hand and scratches at the bark on one of the trees. Tiny, precise movements that barely jostle the branches, and the bark chips fall down to lie scattered at the base. When he’s satisfied with the mark – at his eye-level, no human would ever find it and no Decepticon would ever bother to look – he brushes the mulch bits off his fingers and steps back with a small nod.

His personal comm pings. ::Hey ‘Raj. The youngun’s are champing at the bit and my feet are itching.::

::…They’re what, now?:: Mirage blinks. Hound always did immerse himself a little too well in the local culture.

::Diving me nuts. Get a move on!::

Mirage allows himself a quick, unseen smirk, then revs his engine. ::I’m on my way.::


End file.
